Adulthood Part One: No More Homework (Almost)

I know it’s been a very, very, VERY, long time. 2015 has been a pretty busy year (especially since the last time I wrote a post back in February…oops.) To keep all of you from reading one very long and very jumbled mess of what my life has been like for the past 7 months, I’ve decided to break it up into a series. Hopefully this will not only help you follow along, but will force me to blog regularly, too. Yay for killing two birds with one stone!

So what has happened since February?

Well, I am no longer a competitive golf player. After eight years of traveling with a team, playing in tournaments, and meeting some amazing girls, I walked off my last green as a college golfer and felt a strange mix of emotions. I had to say goodbye to a great coach, a wonderful team, and was forced to come to terms with the fact that I will have to start paying for golf now.

The 2014-2015 Trinity Golf Team.

I made so many memories walking those fairways and greens and it hasn’t been easy getting used to not having practice on a regular basis (though I will admit that I enjoyed having my Tuesday and Thursday mornings back). I still can’t believe how fast four years went by.

With the end of golf came the end of college. Most people say that college is supposed to be the best four years of your life. A part of me really hopes that isn’t true. Don’t get me wrong, college was great, but if the best four years of my life happen when I’m barely 20, I’m in for a pretty boring life. Trinity was very good to me; I received an amazing education, met wonderful and intelligent professors, and made friends I know I will have for a lifetime. But when it came time to graduate in May, I was ready to leave.

I found out in mid-April that I was accepted into both the Disney College Program and the Columbia Publishing Course (more on these later…I promise!), so once I had the rest of 2015 planned out, I was ready to say goodbye to the red brick of Trinity and move on. Not to mention the fact that I spent the last eight years of my life reading, writing, and studying, so the sweet release from homework was one I was very much looking forward too.

It’s still very weird to think that I’m not a student anymore. For so many years school was what defined me. As my grandmother told me, “Alessa, I don’t know who you are going to be without school and homework.” I will admit, the first few weeks after graduation was really difficult for me. I didn’t know what to do with myself now that I wasn’t writing papers or reading textbooks all the time. But I quickly discovered that I didn’t need school to keep learning. In fact, for the first time in a really long time, I felt really at peace with myself. I didn’t have that nagging feeling that I was always behind, I didn’t have to sacrifice pleasure reading for dry textbook reading, and I caught up on many, MANY lost years of sleep.

After I graduated on May 16, I spent a few weeks at home unpacking and repacking my life to get ready to move to the Big Apple for the Columbia Publishing Course for the summer. My seven weeks in NYC were probably the best summer I’ve ever had.